Tuffy's time in the spotlight

Long-time Laurier and Waterloo coach Tuffy Knight finally takes his place in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame today in Hamilton.

Very few university coaches have ever been admitted to the hall. Frank Tindall of Queen's and J.P. Metras of Western might be among the only ones. Knight, as Christine Rivet of the Waterloo Region Record pointed out today (the article's posted at cisfootball.org), changed the university game, getting the league lines redrawn so the Little School, then called Waterloo Lutheran, could play the big boys in that era, Queen's, Western and U of T. Today, all those schools often find themselves looking up at the Laurier Golden Hawks.

A personal feeling is that Halls of Fame should always look at how a person changed how his or her sport was played, not just acknowledge championships and what-not. Today, Tuffy Knight embodies that completely, and what he did building a program at Lutheran/Laurier and later bringing the Waterloo Warriors their first Yates Cup in 1997 was impressive too.

(Only in Canada: One of the highlight shows identified Tuffy as Dave Knight, which he probably hasn't been called since forever. That's like calling Sparky Anderson "George Anderson." We can't have that sort of thing.)